Anyone not wishing to know me most intimately, you have been warned. I came here to introduce myself and tell you my name. If you do not wish to know my truest form then from before to here you have been warned.

As part of every job in education I have ever held, there is a requirement of staff, faculty, and selected student leaders to go through some sort of sexual harassment, sexual assault and Title IX training. So the alert that my mandatory attendance at the training for my new institution came as no surprise to me. What was surprising was my reaction to it. The statistics of women who report versus those that don't sent me right back into my living room curled up on the couch as two police officers asked me the intimate details of my own story.

I recently had a major life epiphany: I was twisting myself into knots trying to prove points to people who didn't matter. Even worse, I was doing so at the severe and often dire detriment of my own health and well-being. I was becoming someone who allowed fear to guide my decisions. I had rushed into choice after choice without taking a moment to ask myself with true consideration of what I actually wanted.